Statistics show that gift card is a $400 billion industry in the U.S. alone. However, about 20% of these cards go unused every year.
One possible reason why gift cards go unused may be because of limited acceptance in that they cannot be used at multiple stores or brands. Another possible reason is that, after receipt, customers may forget using the gift cards, or these cards end up being lost. Most likely, customers may receive multiple gift cards of different brands but have difficulty to monitor their respective expiry dates, because such conventional gift cards provide no solution for them to group different gift cards into one for ease of monitoring and management.
There is thus a need for a technical solution to provide a generic gift card that can be used at multiple merchants or multiple brands, and more importantly, to provide a method and a system for processing payment using such a generic gift card. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the disclosure.